Rocky Paneno rolled with easy confidence through the glass-and-brick hall where the University of Southern California celebrated its athletic heritage and collection of Heisman Trophies.

While no trophies bear his name, Paneno’s athleticism and courage have earned him something far more precious – another taste of life’s ordinary sweetness that only those who have faced death can savor.

“Sometimes it’s just one moment in the day when you have a great laugh with someone,” said Paneno, 26, who now uses a wheelchair after surviving a six-story fall that left his legs paralyzed.

“It just makes you glad you’re alive.”

It’s this fortitude and optimism that forged this former high school track, gymnastics and football athlete into a Trojan like his father before him.

Paneno, who grew up in La Cañada Flintridge and now lives in Los Angeles, just started his junior year majoring in math. He is one of 22 recipients of a USC Physically Challenged Athletes Scholarship.

“Some people (with a disabling injury) would be on the pity pot,” said Ron Orr of the nonprofit group Swim with Mike, which oversees the scholarship created in 1981 to help raise money for Mike Nyeholt, a three-time All-American swimmer who was paralyzed from the chest down in a motorcycle accident.

“(Paneno) is somebody who turned on the positive side and would benefit from the scholarship,” said Orr, also an associate athletic director at USC. “It’s taking advantage of the characteristics they have as athletes – drive, perseverance, dedication, goal-setting – these are things that apply to academics. It gets them back in the mainstream and gives them another thing to do with their lives.”

Paneno is the second member of his family to earn the scholarship. His older brother, Sam, 28, is a former University of California, Davis, football player who dislocated his knee in a tackle during a 1999 game. It caused an artery blockage that led to the amputation of his lower right leg.

Fitted with a prosthetic leg, he carried on and used the 2004 scholarship award to complete law school.

For Rocky Paneno, tragedy struck in October 2000, during a study-abroad program in Florence, Italy, an adventure for the then-20-year-old to explore his Italian heritage.

He was out on his apartment balcony on a starry night, when the railing collapsed and sent him tumbling six stories to a patch of grass below.

The prognosis was grim – a priest even administered last rites. His parents received word of the accident and were on the way to be with their son within two days.

“We were told we were going to be coming over to see a dead son,” said Marla Paneno, Rocky’s mother. “That was the hardest part – that long plane flight. My husband and I were praying nonstop.

“When I finally saw him, it was an out-of-body experience. He was hooked up everywhere. I remember grabbing his hand and brushed his forehead. I just told him I loved him, and we made it here.”

The fall shattered Paneno’s spine, ruptured his spleen and both kidneys, and collapsed his lungs. He also lost 20 percent of his heart muscle and was paralyzed from the waist down.

Paneno was in a coma for nearly two weeks as doctors fought to save his life.

“The doctors said if he didn’t have the spirit he had and he wasn’t in the athletic shape that he was, and he didn’t have the will to live, he wouldn’t be here,” Marla Paneno said.

He gradually regained consciousness, beginning with a few hand movements.

“All of a sudden, I snapped and was back in some kind of reality,” Paneno recalled. “They were all smiling down at me. I wasn’t sure what was going on.”

But he knew something was wrong from the looks on his parents’ faces.

“You can see the drained souls there.”

Paneno still needed back surgery and new kidneys, along with months of physical therapy as he adjusted to life as a paraplegic.

“The first few weeks after my back fusion – it was some of the most excruciating pain I’ve ever had,” he said. “It’s like a little kid. I have to learn how to move my body again.”

“There was only one night when he said, `Why?”‘ his mother recalled. “It was after he had back surgery. … He never said it again. The next day he got to work.”

The physical therapists pushed him – they dragged him out of bed in the morning when he wanted to sleep until noon, urging him to twist or bend a little more each time.

“I was an athlete,” Paneno said. “If you’re in a lot of pain, you just push through it. … There’s no time to pity yourself.

“It basically reminded me of hell week in football.”

He also drew inspiration from his brother Sam, who had to learn to walk again after his amputation.

“Seeing his strength with everything he did made me want to do it,” he said.

But it wasn’t easy for his mother, who sat with him, fed him and cared for him all over again.

“I tried to stay really, really positive, even when there were times that seemed so bleak to me,” she said. “Then something happens inside of you – you just do what you need to do. It’s amazing that human beings have this strength. I could be the rock for Rocky.”

Besides his back, Paneno needed dialysis – each procedure drained him of his strength – until doctors could locate a replacement kidney.

“It was hard for him just to take a shower,” his mother said. “He would recuperate in between days, and he would be back again.”

That’s when Paneno’s youngest sibling, Domenic, then 10, lent a hand.

“He ran every errand for me,” Paneno said. “If I dropped the TV control and it was just 2 inches away from my fingers, he would get it.”

There were plenty of candidates for kidneys – both Paneno’s parents and brother Sam were a match. The donation fell to his father, Frank, after doctors discouraged Sam because of his amputation, and Marla was unexpectedly diagnosed with breast cancer.

“Having his dad’s kidney, he was a different person,” said Marla, whose disease has been in remission for five years. “He just felt he had a new lease on life.

“(Frank) has said giving Rocky his kidney is the highlight of his life. That was something in his life that gave him purpose – to make sure his son carries on.”

And the family, tempered by tragedy and faith, still thrives today.

“When times get tough for any of us, we just have to stop,” she said. “Rocky or Sam will remind me, `Mom, it’s just the small stuff.’ It’s just the bills and the flat tires.”

The brothers can forever smile about the past – whether it’s a sunset or in the company of friends: